International Men’s Day

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Miriam Cates]

Absolutely. I think that the danger of not giving a positive version of masculinity—something that is unique, positive and good for society—is that, sadly, we are driving some young men and boys to the far right. They are given a version of masculinity that none of us here would support, but which offers them something that, at present, some of the discussions that take place in society do not offer. That is why it is so important that we do offer something to young boys.

I think that some of the economic and social changes that have taken place over the last 40 years have had benefits but have also led to significant costs, particularly for working-class men and boys. The decline of industry and hence of skilled, well-paid, secure jobs has caused a drop in wealth, health and status for many men.

The steelworks in the town of Stocksbridge in my constituency used to employ 11,000 men; it now employs 750. Steel jobs still pay 50% more than the average Yorkshire wage. They require skills and they confer status, but they are now few and far between. The economic and social consequences for men of the loss of such jobs have been severe. We need to consider how we can reinvest in British industry, not to go back to the past but to pivot to the skilled, advanced manufacturing jobs of the future, such as those at the specialty steel plant in my constituency. Not only would a revival in manufacturing and industry be good news for men; it would be beneficial for the UK economy, which has a terrible balance of trade—we make nowhere near enough stuff ourselves—and for our security and self-sufficiency in important materials such as steel.

While industrial and manufacturing jobs have declined, the number of young people going to university has soared. Of course, that has brought benefits, but there is no clear relationship between the number of graduates and the nation’s GDP, and we now have far more graduates than our economy requires. About 50% of recent graduates are thought to be in jobs that do not require that level of academic education. This focus—I might call it an obsession —on cognitive credentials and degrees over technical or vocational skills has been particularly disadvantageous to working-class young men.

Recent research shows that the median earnings of men who graduated from the bottom 23 universities are less than the median earnings of non-graduates. In other words, a significant number of younger men would be better off not going to university—and that is not to mention the debt they will acquire while there. I am delighted that the Government are pushing a skills agenda, but we must do more to open up apprenticeships to young men. The Chancellor’s announcement today that we will move towards a German and Swiss model of skills education is great news, but we should also consider whether some of our enormous higher education budget—I think it is about £14 billion a year—could be better deployed for the benefit of young people and the economy.

Men and boys have also suffered as a result of the decline in family stability over the last few decades. As my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley said, the most stable form of family—and the one with the best outcomes for children—is where the parents are married. That is not a value judgment; it is clear from the evidence. Married parents are twice as likely to stay together as non-married parents. By the age of five, 53% of children with cohabiting parents will have experienced their parents’ separation, compared to just 15% of those with married parents. Married men live happier, longer, healthier lives, and boys with committed, present fathers have better outcomes than boys in families who do not have that presence.

Marriage is good for men and boys, yet marriage rates have declined significantly over recent years, particularly among lower income groups. Marriage has almost become a middle-class secret. Of the highest earning 20% of white couples, about 85% are married. In the lowest income group—the bottom 20% of white people—only 19% are married, and the divorce rates are much higher. A poor white child is very unlikely to have a father; a rich white child is very likely to have a father. That is how stark the difference is.

There has been a rise in loneliness among middle-aged men as a result of family breakdown. Family breakdown is also contributing to the housing crisis. I think it might have been the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) who pointed out that a second home is needed when families break down. That adds to the housing crisis and creates financial problems for the family.

The UK is an outlier among western nations, in that our policies and our tax system do not recognise families, nor strong couple relationships and marriage. For example, in the UK we are taxed on an individual basis. HMRC sees only our individual income and we pay tax on that, without any account of how many people that income supports. If someone earns slightly more than £50,000 per year, which is considered a high wage—thinking about the tax thresholds—but they support, say, a family of six, they are taxed the same as a single person who earns the same amount but supports no one at all. As people enter the higher tax rate, they also lose their child benefit and there are all kinds of knock-on effects of the tax system. Other countries such as France, Germany, Canada and the US have different systems, in which the household is taxed or in which family policy recognises the benefits of parenting and supports families. We need to reform our taxation system to be much more pro-family and to make it easier for couples to stay together. I am delighted about the Government’s family hubs programme; we need to determine how family hubs will support fathers to be involved in the early years of bringing up their children.

Finally, there is an issue affecting the health and wellbeing of men, particularly boys, in a truly alarming way. We have a growing public health crisis as a result of the proliferation of online pornography. In 2020, pornography websites received more traffic than Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, Zoom, Pinterest and LinkedIn combined. For too long, society has viewed porn as a private matter, assuming that what people do in the privacy of their own home is their own business, but it is clear that the impacts on society have been significant and negative.

We must wake up to the destructive impacts of internet pornography. There is nothing “mainstream” about the porn now available online. Mainstream pornography platforms host vast quantities—unknown quantities—of filmed crimes: videos of trafficking, rape, non-consensual sexual violence, child sexual abuse material, sexual coercion, abuse and exploitation of vulnerable women and children, intrafamilial rape, humiliation, punishment, torture and pain, all available at the click of a mouse or the touch of an iPhone.

Analysis of 130,000 titles of videos that were recommended to first-time users of Pornhub and other major sites found that one in every eight described sexual activities that constitute sexual violence. “Teen” was the word that occurred most frequently across the dataset; the second most common category was physical aggression and sexual assault. Viewing such videos affects what men, particularly boys, think about sex—what they think is normal and what they think is acceptable.

It is right to think about the impact of pornography on women and girls. It is notable that so many high-profile rapes and murders in recent years, including the tragic murder of Sarah Everard, have been committed by men who were addicted to hardcore pornography. However, children’s consumption of online pornography has been associated with the dramatic increase in child-on-child sexual abuse, which now constitutes around a third of all child sexual abuse, so we also need to think about the negative impact on boys.

Approximately 50% of 12-year-olds have seen pornography online, and 1.4 million children in the UK access it each month. A UK survey found that 44% of boys aged between 11 and 16 who regularly viewed pornography reported that it gave them ideas about the type of sex that they wanted to try. We have seen the normalisation of strangulation during sex, and of anal sex among young people. A year or so ago, a case was reported of a boy who raped a girl in school; when the teacher asked him why he had not stopped, he said, “I thought it was normal for girls to cry during sex.” How are these boys ever going to enjoy normal, loving, fulfilling intimate relationships?

During puberty, boys’ brains develop an erotic imprint in which what they see as normal and appropriate sexual behaviour is laid down. That imprint will stay with them for the rest of their life. How many of these boys will be drawn into serious sex offences? How many will endure broken relationships or broken families, or never form relationships at all?

Pornography also affects boys’ health. There has been an increase in erectile dysfunction among teenage boys. At the extreme, the constant use of pornography can quickly lead men not to become aroused by anything other than hardcore online porn. That is why it is so important that we pass the Online Safety Bill when it returns to this House, and that it goes through the House of Lords and becomes an Act of Parliament. We must introduce secure age verification so that no children can access pornographic websites. We must stop children accidentally viewing or deliberately sharing pornographic images with one another online. While children’s brains are developing, it is so crucial that they do not have access to extreme material.

At the moment, internet pornography is completely unregulated. I am afraid that people who say it is parents’ responsibility to make sure their children do not view it are not living in the real world. Even if a child has no phone and no computer, all it takes is a classmate to put their own phone in front of the child for them to see this stuff. A child is only as safe as the least protected child in their class. It would be a bit like telling parents to teach their children to cross the road safely if there were no speed limit, no crossing points and no side of the road that we legally had to drive on—it would be completely impossible.

As well as being completely unregulated, internet pornography is a public health disaster. On top of the Online Safety Bill, we need the Department of Health and Social Care to lead a public inquiry into the harms of pornography—not only the harms to women and girls, the harms to the economy and the criminal aspects but the harms to boys and men and to their happiness, fulfilment and physical and mental health. The future social impact of this porn epidemic will be catastrophic if we do not protect our boys and girls. I believe that online pornography is the opiate trade of our age, and we should be outraged by what our children are seeing.

Our families, our communities and our nation need strong, confident, healthy and skilled boys and men. It is therefore in all our interests to invest in skills and industry, to support marriage and families, and to end the destruction caused by online pornography.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the SNP spokesperson, Steven Bonnar.

[Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for opening this debate, all hon. and right hon. Members for their valuable contributions and the Backbench Business Committee for allowing time for this debate on International Men’s Day, when we recognise not only the contribution of men to society but, more importantly, the long-lasting systemic issues faced by many of us.

As an MP sent here from Scotland, and as a representative of the Scottish National party, I stress the importance to me and my party that we persistently address inequality wherever and whenever we find it. As a nation and as a society, we will never truly flourish if we do not allow all our people the opportunities they deserve and the chance to fulfil their potential, whatever their social or economic background. For far too many men across these islands, that chance and those opportunities are not always possible. Indeed, they are becoming increasingly unattainable for many of us.

Far too often, we hear of the consequences of negative mental health for men but little of its factors and root causes. According to studies conducted by the Mental Health Foundation, societal expectations and traditional gender roles and stereotypes contribute to why men are far less likely to open up and discuss or seek support for their mental health problems.

We know that the gender stereotypes faced by women, such as the idea that they should behave, look or dress a certain way, can be hugely damaging not only to them as individuals but to society as a whole, and it is also important to understand that stereotypes and expectations can have a detrimental impact on many men. We find it difficult to talk about our feelings, to open up and to admit we are not coping well with the demands of life—that is to say, the demands that are real and present, but also those we perceive to be upon us.

Men are also more likely to turn to harmful coping methods, such as growing a dependency on drugs, alcohol or other harmful escapes. These actions, of course, serve only to exacerbate and compound poor mental health, leading to a downward spiral that far too often ends in the tragic act of a young man taking his own life. I take this opportunity to call, once again, on the UK Government to devolve drug policy to the Scottish Parliament, which will allow the Scottish Government to properly tackle the root causes of many of the tragic losses of life we see in Scotland week in, week out.

According to the latest figures from Public Health Scotland, 75% of those who died by suicide in 2021 were male, with the highest rate occurring in the 45 to 54-year-old age group. The probable suicide rate was three times higher in the most deprived communities in Scotland than in our most affluent areas. The hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) spoke about the impact of that. We know that work pressures, low pay, relationship breakdowns and parental alienation—being separated from our children after a relationship breakdown—are key factors that drive men to think suicide is an option.

The Scottish Government are determined to see a Scotland in which suicide is prevented and where help and support are available to anyone contemplating suicide, with further resources made available to anyone struggling with self-harm or thoughts of suicide. The Scottish Government’s new “Creating Hope Together” strategy takes a whole Government and society approach to tackling the social determinants of suicide, so that we take every opportunity to identify and support people who are feeling suicidal.

These kinds of actions and that type of compassion are, regrettably, not always present in this place, and we see that in the treatment of the most vulnerable people in our society. Young men in the UK asylum system are disproportionately impacted by Britain’s frankly inhumane system as it currently operates. The vilification from some in the Government and in the mainstream media only serves to add to that. When the Home Secretary uses terminology such as “invasion” to refer to young men asylum seekers, is she doing so with compassion? No, she is not, far from it.

We know the asylum system is broken, but after 12 years of Tory Government rule the onus of responsibility is on those on the Government Benches. They have created the mess and the backlog. It is they who have failed to repair a broken asylum system, and they must recognise the consequences of that for the mental health of men.

Last year, 46 charities dealing with issues of asylum, children and mental health, including the Refugee Council, the Children’s Society and Mind, wrote to the Health Minister in charge of suicide prevention and highlighted the dozens of suicides they had discovered among teenage male asylum seekers fleeing persecution in their home countries. Zoe Gardner, former policy advocacy manager at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, gave these poignant words in response to the UK Government’s current asylum policy:

“You can be a man and a refugee. You can be a man and a victim of trauma, torture and sexual violence. You can be a man with disabilities. You can be a man who has lived closeted or been abused because of their sexuality. The narrative that men somehow are not vulnerable and are not in need of protection is completely false. Men are very often the ones targeted in the first place in refugee producing countries.”

If the UK Government will not heed the advice on mental health provisions and echo the progressive vision of the Scottish Government to attempt to mitigate the high rate of suicides and poor mental health regulations, then we again call for the devolution of immigration powers to the Scottish Parliament, which is a Parliament that has proven time and again that no matter where people have come from, or their financial background, their wellbeing will always be our priority.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call shadow Minister Yasmin Qureshi.